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Historic freeze could break Midwest temp records

The deep freeze headed to the U.S. Midwest hasn't been seen for decades, with a threat of frostbite and hypothermia.

Sunlight streams through the windows of a building which caught on fire in Plattsmouth, Neb. (Nati Harnik / AP)

A woman cross country skies following a snow storm in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. (Spencer Platt / GETTY IMAGES)

By CARSON WALKERAssociated Press

Sat., Jan. 4, 2014

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — The
deep freeze
expected to arrive Sunday in parts of the United States will be one to remember, with potential record-low temperatures heightening fears of frostbite and hypothermia.

It hasn’t been this cold for decades — 20 years in Washington, D.C., 18 years in Milwaukee, 15 in Missouri — even in the Midwest, where bundling up is second nature.

Blame it on a “polar vortex,” as one meteorologist calls it, a counterclockwise-rotating pool of cold, dense air.

“It’s just a large area of very cold air that comes down, forms over the North Pole or polar regions … usually stays in Canada, but this time it’s going to come all the way into the eastern United States,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Phillip Schumacher in Sioux Falls, S.D.

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The frigid air — a perfect combination of the jet stream, cold surface temperatures and the polar vortex — will begin Sunday and extend into early next week, funnelled as far south as the Gulf of Mexico.

The forecasts are startling: –31 C in Fargo, N.D., –35 C in International Falls, Minn., and –26 C in Indianapolis and Chicago. At those temperatures, exposed skin can get frostbitten in minutes and hypothermia can quickly set in as wind chills may reach –45 to –56 C.

Even wind chills of –31 C can do serious damage, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Truett in St. Louis.

“Those are dangerous levels of wind chill,” he said of the expected wind chill in Missouri at daybreak Monday. “A person not properly dressed could die easily in those conditions.”

Already, parts of the northeastern New England states dropped into the negatives early Saturday, with East Brighton, Vt., seeing –34.4 C just after midnight and Allagash, Maine, hitting –37.8 C. The cold will sweep through other parts of New England, where residents are digging out from a snowstorm.

Snow will reduce the sun’s heating effect, so nighttime lows will plummet with the strong northwest winds, Maue said.

The South also will dip into temperatures rarely seen. By Monday morning, western and central Kentucky could be –18 C — “definitely record-breaking,” said weather service meteorologist Christine Wielgos in Paducah, Ky. And in Atlanta, Tuesday’s high is expected to hover around –4 C.

Sunday’s National Football League playoff game in Green Bay could be among one of the coldest ever played — a frigid –19 C — when the Packers and San Francisco 49ers kick off at Lambeau Field. Medical experts suggest fans wear at least three layers and drink warm fluids — not alcohol.

Minnesota has called off school Monday for the entire state — the first such closing in 17 years.

Before the polar plunge, Earth was as close as it gets to the sun each year on Saturday. The planet orbits the sun in an oval and on average is about 149.7 million kilometres) away. But every January, Earth is at perihelion, and on Saturday, it was only 147.1 million kilometres from the sun. But that proximity doesn’t affect the planet’s temperatures.

Maue noted that it’s relatively uncommon to have such frigid air blanket so much of the U.S., maybe once a decade or every couple of decades.

At least 16 deaths were blamed on a snowstorm that swept across the eastern half of the U.S., including three people who officials said died at least partly because of the extreme cold.

In Canada, a transformer malfunctioned at the terminal station in Sunnyside, Nfld., after an overnight blizzard, knocking out power to 190,000 customers. About 125,000 people remained without power Saturday afternoon, mostly in eastern Newfoundland.

Correction - January 6, 2014:
This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the distance of the Earth from the Sun at perihelion as 15 million kilometres.

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